Socio+Cultural+Influences

Is our ability (or lack of ability) to achieve in a second language influenced to any great extent by the social and cultural world we live in or is it something that is innate and progresses in stages?

Historically schools have tended to teach the second language as a first step and only delivered academic content when it was thought the students had acquired sufficient understanding in the second language to grasp the concepts. The thinking behind this approach was very much influenced by Piaget where learning was seen to progress in stages and essentially be influenced by the students' own innate ability.

More recent research ﻿has highlighted the importance of addressing a range of aspects in the students education - social, cultural, academic and cognitive. 1  Students are far more likely to succeed if they continue to acquire academic understanding and develop cognitively in their first language alongside the acquisition of the second. This development is most likely to occur if the learning is scaffolded purposefully and according to the needs of the students alongside the effective combination of more skilled and less skilled participants.2

The socio-cultural influence is closely connected to the work done by Brenner 3 who sees knowledge as being what is co-constructed socially and culturally in relationships which are positive and encouraging. Of course if the opposite is true it will have a corresponding effect and students trying to achieve in environments where they do not feel valued and respected will experience difficulties.

Work done for New Zealand schools by LEAP (Language Enhancing the Achievement of Pasifika) acknowledges the importance of building strong relationships across the community and homes as well as in the classroom in order to help children learn( []).

Students use prior knowledge to help attach the new learning to what they already know and both their heritage language and the second language play a key role in how the student internalises the new learning and later transfers that to action. 2 The implications for teaching and learning here is the need to be aware of what the student already knows and help them to be aware of what they already know so that there is a connection for the new learning to attach itself. This would again highlight the importance of developing the heritage language alongside the second language to enable the student to make the connections and build on what they already know. For a neat summary of the different theories of scaffolding visit. []

1. Collier, V.P. (1995). Acquiring a second language for school. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.[] 2.Rogoff, B.  (1990) Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York. Oxford University Press. 3.Thomas & Collier (2002) in May, S. (2009) //Pasifika Languages Strategy: Key Issues.// (Chapter 4,pp14-19) Report to Ministry of Pacific Affairs. (Unpublished report) Auckland: MPIA